USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive: Netherlands

Established in 1994 to preserve the audio-visual histories of survivors and other witnesses of the Holocaust, the USC Shoah Foundation maintains one of the largest video digital libraries in the world: the Visual History Archive (VHA).

Netherlands

The USC Shoah Foundation recorded 2,838 testimonies which refer to the Netherlands. They are in various languages (including 1,083 in Dutch) and were gathered in several different countries (1,062 in the Netherlands).

A large number of interviewees talk about the prewar Jewish communities in Holland: some 1,439 Jewish survivors interviewed by the Shoah Foundation were born in the Netherlands, growing up in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and other locations.

After Hitler came to power in 1933, refugees from Germany and Austria fled to Holland, some making their way further on Kindertransports to the United Kingdom or immigrating to the United States.

After the German invasion of May 1940, the situation gradually became ever more perilous for Jews. The Dutch testimonies describe the imposition of anti-Jewish laws, such as the wearing of the yellow star; the role of the Joodse Raad (Jewish Council or Judenrat) and its leaders Abraham Asscher and David Cohen, among others; the formation of the Amsterdam ghetto and the use of the Hollandsche Schouwburg as a collection center; the deportations to the Westerbork and Vught (Herzogenbusch) concentration camps and, from there, to Sobibor or to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. Out of 30,000 Jews deported from the Netherlands to the Sobibor death camp in Poland, there are only 19 known to have survived; the USC Shoah Foundation archive has interviews with five.

The archive contains many interviews of survivors who successfully hid or assumed false identities. Another major topic is involvement in the Dutch underground, with content about the Nederlandse Binnenlandse Strijdkrachte as well as specific groups like Landelijke Knokploegen.

The testimonies give information on Dutch aid givers such as Leendert Overduin, Corrie Ten Boom, and Joop Westerweel, and of rescue efforts such as the so-called Philips Group. There are discussions of those who attempted to help Jews avoid deportation, such as Walter Süskind and Piet Meerburg.

Additionally, the archive contains 113 interviews with Rescuers and Aid Providers born in the Netherlands, including 79 in Dutch; 77 of these interviews were conducted in Holland.